


I have no Life but this

by middlemarch



Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Gen, Meaning, Symbolism, things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 18:52:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8412727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: An existential crisis during the War was a dime a dozen.





	

Sam’s bedroom at the vicarage had held all the trappings of a proper English girl’s childhood—the canary in his cage, its cloth always askew by morning’s light, the shelves full of gaily colored books, featuring Betty Gordon and Judy Bolton, all as tidy as the endings to the mysteries themselves, some gymkhana ribbons and dried flowers, a doll named Clarissa she’d never really liked, and a pale eiderdown, the color something like a faded primrose, but she’d never felt at home there as she had in the dark confines of the Wolesley. Its leather seat was welcome and the window frame broke up the world, revealing aspects she’d never before seen, light and shadow and colors blurred by speed, a kaleidoscope that made a curious sense. The steering wheel made her feel like a Norse goddess when she turned it and chose the way they went, the scent of tweed and the smoky Lapsang Souchong Mr. Foyle preferred settled her when little else could, were what she tried to remember every time she huddled in a bomb shelter. Sam stopped believing her father altogether when he wrote her that people could not find comfort in things, that only the ethereal transcendence of God was what they longed for; she loved the Wolesley and the world she made of it, just as much as Mrs. Higgins a street over loved her china pug, Mr. McLeod from the corner shop his violin, the finish on the belly never quite polishing the lumber of it until he played, as much as Mr. Foyle loved the watercolors his wife had left him. She’d seen that the one time he’d asked her to wait just inside the house while he collected his overcoat, how the paintings were carefully hung at the level of his gaze, evidently dusted as the sideboard was not, how he paused to look at them before he left, looked and saw.

**Author's Note:**

> This was in response to a dare/prompt on Tumblr to write a story with a caged bird where the caged bird was not a metaphor or symbol. I admit, this is not a proper story, since it is so short, but I tried :) The books Sam remembers were popular series for girls in the 1930s. 
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
